Jefferson Airplane – White Rabbit (HQ) ~ (ReEdit)

Starship – “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” – ORIGINAL VIDEO – HQ

by By Skip SheffieldFormer Jefferson Airplane lead singer Grace Slick will greet her public and talk about her flourishing career in art from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday at Wentworth Gallery at Town Center at Boca Raton. Slick will also appear from 6 to 9 tonight at Wentworth Gallery in the Gardens Mall in Palm Beach Gardens.Grace Slick was always feisty and outspoken as front woman of Jefferson Airplane and Starship, and she is no shrinking violet at age 65.She gave up performing in 1998 because she felt it was silly for a woman her age to sing rock music and try and act like a teenager. She had her first public art show in Fort Lauderdale in 1989, and art is where she channels her creative energy now.

“There a lot of us former rock people who are doing art now,” he offers by telephone from Malibu, California. “My old bandmate Marty Balin is doing quite well. So is Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones, and so was Jerry Garcia before he died.”

Slick first painted furry animals (the white rabbit is still a favorite) and beautiful nudes. Her agent suggested she begin doing portraits of musicians she knew, and she has obliged with portraits of Jim Morrison, Jerry Garcia, Janis Joplin and Sting.

“I let my agent deal with the so-called art world,” she says. “He makes suggestions and sets up my appearances. I just paint every day as the spirit strikes.”

Slick was born Grace Wing Oct. 30, 1939 in Evanston, Illinois, but she was raised in San Francisco. She attended the University of Miami in 1958-1959, but admits she was more a partier than a scholar. After graduating from Finch College she returned to San Francisco and married Gerald “Jerry” Slick, a cinematographer. She joined Jefferson Airplane in 1966, replacing original singer Signe Anderson, and sang two of the group’s signature songs, “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love.”

Slick divorced and remarried and divorced and became an outspoken anti-war activist as well as a self-admitted rowdy drunk. In 1971 she and Jefferson Airplane guitarist Paul Kantner had a daughter, China Wing Kantner, with whom Slick remains close.

“China is now working on a Ph.D,” Slick reveals proudly. “Her special study is spirituality.”

Although she performed with former bandmates Marty Balin and Paul Kantner for a post-9/11 concert, Slick says she is officially retired from public performance.

“I don’t walk to be one of those old relics doing the oldies circuit,” she protests. “There are a few signature groups that can get away with it. The Rolling Stones need it, evidently, and they are still one of the best rock ‘n’ roll groups in the world. I’m going to be 66 next month, for God sakes. Art is my focus now. I do it all the time. I’m just grateful some people like it well enough to buy it.

Based on her tempestuous rock-star career as lead singer for Jefferson Airplane in the 1960s, no one would expect Grace Slick to be shy or demure, even at age 73.

And sure enough, she isn’t.

“I’ve lived a good life,” she said by phone from her Malibu home. “Now I’m an old broad.”

In her second career as an artist, Slick produces paintings just as colorful and provocative as her songs. She’ll appear Saturday, May 18, at the Norcal Modern Gallery in Healdsburg, which is hosting her “Once Upon a Time” exhibit.

Her work is filled with “Alice in Wonderland” images reminiscent of Slick’s 1967 hit, “White Rabbit,” but her interest in art, and Alice, predates her rock and roll career, she said.

“I knew I could draw when I was very little. I used to draw angels when I was about 5,” she said.

“The story of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ was the only one that was read to me where some Prince Charming doesn’t come along and save her,” Slick said. “She has a lot of guts. She does it all herself. She doesn’t stop.”

While Slick’s income comes from her music royalties, she doesn’t deny the commercial appeal of her iconic White Rabbit paintings.

“I have an agent, and his job is to sell stuff,” she added. “He finds that my portraits of other rock musicians also sell, and I enjoy doing that, too.”

Slick wrote “White Rabbit” while in a Bay Area Band called The Great Society, formed in 1965. After joining Jefferson Airplane the following year, she recorded the song for the “Surrealistic Pillow” album.

She also performed in the band’s later incarnations — Jefferson Starship, from 1981 to 1984, and Starship, until 1988. She retired from rock and roll in 1989, and began painting in the mid-1990s.

Her first art show was in Florida in 2000, and she has had more than 100 exhibits since then, creating fanciful images with bright acrylic paints.

“I like really heavy, knock-your-brains-out color,” Slick said. “I paint in acrylic, because it’s fast, and I don’t have a lot of time left to sit around and let oil paint dry.”

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